I Don’t Care

Sour grapes aren’t good for much, except maybe using in recipes with a lot of sugar. We all know of the ‘sour grapes’ phenomenon thanks ancient Greek storyteller, Aesop. The basic scenario is this:

One wants something passionately,
puts in some effort to get it,
fails because it is out of reach,
gives up,
declares that they don’t want it anymore, and
rationalizes that there was probably something wrong with it anyway.

This fable illustrates classic cognitive dissonance, a situation where two beliefs or emotional states don’t match, and the believer makes changes to one to reduce anxiety/anger/stress associated with mismatched reality. Creating a rationale for the new belief is usually necessary to make it ‘stick’.  The fox convinces itself that not only did it not want the grapes, but they weren’t any good to begin with.

And we do this in all areas of our lives when faced with challenges and barriers to getting what we want and need.

1. We see the perfect job posting, apply for it with everything we’ve got, and fail to get it. We tell ourselves, “Thank goodness I didn’t get the job. I would have had to give up XYZ, and I hear the Director is really abusive…”
2. We go out on a date with an attractive, intelligent man or woman, have a great time, and look forward to a second meeting. The person either doesn’t call afterwards or makes excuses when we extend a second invitation. We conclude that the date wasn’t really that great, we are too busy to be extending our social lives, and/or the person seemed like they had some ‘issues’. Good thing it didn’t work out…
3. We prepare a special meal for a hard-to-please friend/partner/family member that we are quite proud of. This person criticizes the food throughout the meal. We apologize profusely, telling the person and ourselves that we were a bit ‘off’ today, and that we agree that it wasn’t our best effort.

Soothing ourselves after a ‘failure’ is all well and good, but there is a difference between accepting a failure and moving on, and changing what we believe in order to rationalize the failure. When we do the latter, we lose belief in ourselves and our abilities, and with repeated instances of this, we start to lose confidence and give up more easily. It becomes easier and easier to say, “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t matter.”

It is much more difficult to keep the first belief intact and continue to try to change the reality of the second. For example, our proverbial fox would need to hold on to the desire for grapes, and look for a lower-hanging branch. We would need to keep on applying for jobs that are within our reach while finding out why we didn’t get the first job. We would keep on asking people on dates with the understanding that attraction is a two-way street. And we would assert ourselves and defend our cooking ability under the critique of someone who might not have a good bedside (tableside) manner.

So, decide that you do care enough to hold on to your initial goals and beliefs. I’m including a link here for strategies to increase self-discipline as a place to start.